Community solar is one of the unsung heroes of the solar industry, the sometimes overlooked middle child between rooftop solar and utility scale solar.
In the up-and-down solar industry, community solar has been consistently up, with projects growing both in size and in number every year since 2014 except for 2022, according to a study from National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). While distributed solar dropped possibly by as much as 30% in 2024, Ohm Analytics’ data shows that community solar bucked the trend in the fourth quarter, surging 72% year-over-year. As a sign of such growth, the Coalition for Community Solar Access will be hosting its 2nd Annual Community Solar Innovation Summit on June 26 and 27 in Colorado.
In such a fast-growing growing market, many residential rooftop solar installers are considering entering the community solar market but might find the landscape different from what they are used to. The shift in scale from a 10 kW rooftop array to a 5 MW ground-mounted array is only the beginning. One of the virtues of community solar is that it opens the solar market to a wider audience, including renters, homeowners without adequate sun exposure, households with low or moderate incomes, short-term residents, and people with lower credit ratings. Reaching this wider addressable market can involve different sales practices. Yet given lower consumer awareness, installers may hesitate hiring or training their sales team in the selling community solar, and instead choose to work with third parties acquisition teams.
pv magazine USA spoke with three different entities that work with solar installers specifically on community solar projects and know its unique challenges. Sean Willchene, CEO of Minnesota-based Shared Solar Advisors, leads a sales team that has worked with developers of community solar farms for nearly a decade. Now operating in nine states, Willchene’s team provides a valuable service for installers who may have already leased land, received approval to build, or have completed projects just waiting to receive permission to operate. As Willchene put it, they often need someone to go to door to door to acquire “that last 30% of hard-to-reach customers,” especially in rural areas where it’s not financially worthwhile for installers to have their own internal sales force.
PTM Solar is a New York-based company which started in community solar acquisitions but is now developing its own rooftop solar installation business. Ryan McManus, President of PTM Solar, spoke with pv magazine USA about the both opportunities involved in community solar as well as the challenges. PTM Solar’s independent contractors go door-to-door on behalf of installers, sign up both subscribers to developer-owned solar farms as well as customers wanting shared ownership of a solar farm.
McManus noted that the challenges of working with a third-party sales acquisition team are the same in community solar as those in rooftop solar. With solar sales practices increasingly the subject of regulatory concern, McManus stressed the importance of installers working with a company that has a code of compliance for independent contractors and has a training process covering the rules and regulations of the municipalities they are working in.
In Maine, where subscription-based community solar has boomed in recent years, the Maine Community Power Cooperative offers an ownership model that is lower in cost and therefore accessible to the same potential customers who might be attracted to subscription models. More than 50% of the cooperative’s owner/members are from low and moderate income households, demonstrating the broad accessibility of consumer-owned community solar. Tyler Adkins, the cooperative’s CEO, explained that each 200 kWdc solar farm is built by a subcontracted local installer, but ownership is shared between 50 coop members. Unlike subscription-based community solar, co-ownership of community solar offers what rooftop solar ownership does – insulation from the volatility of retail electricity rates – making it an attractive proposition.
Community solar has also proved to be an attractive proposition for installers. While saving money is the biggest driver of all residential solar adoption, rooftop solar can also be attractive for a variety of reasons, including environmental ones, concerns about resilience or owning your own power. By contrast, Willchene of Shared Solar Advisors has found that for potential customers of community solar, saving money is far and away the top priority, making it an easier sell.
Community solar is a more stable sector in the solar industry, a niche that competes neither with capital intensive, high-risk utility-scale projects, nor with rooftop solar, with its relatively high labor and acquisition costs. “It’s a safe place to park your money,” as Willchene put it. Community solar’s decade-long upward trajectory is proof of that.
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